How and why, did you first get into linux? (And why do you continue to use it today?)

Ok, I'll start....

I started out with a Spectrum 48k as a kid.

Then my first "proper" computer (and still my all time favorite) was my Amiga.
A couple of years after Amiga Inc died, I finally relented. And got my brothers old Pentium 3 running XP pro.

However...I was getting seriously fed up with windows randomly crashing, and just pleasing itself....I used to buy "PC Answers" and it came with a
version of Ububtu on it (5.10 I think??) So, after calling on one of my best mates expertese (He explained how to go on with partitioning,
setting up the proper mount points etc etc). I was left with a nice new shiny Desktop.

I couldnt accsess my Win-NTFS partitions but had set up a FAT-32 shared drive and I was away!!

I've been buying and using Linux format ever since

Now using Ubuntu 7.10 form the LXF cover discs and loving it!

So...over to you

Last edited by GeordieJedi on Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is this a bit of social engineering your not going to hunt us down and pretend your us...

Me I've always been interested in computers. I had issues with window98 and windows2k/XP my brother likes to delete everything he can. Being metally handicapped I had to stop him doing it after win2k I installed SUSE9.3 pro (which I personally loved) I run linux on his laptop dualbooting with XP again he seems to love to mutilate it. I run SUSE10.3 on this machine dual booted with vista. (I need the comfort zone)
I forced my brother to use linux told him he can do everything he needs to without windows and he has been quite happy with it although his step kids arnt so happy I hear comments like I been using windows since I was in primary school although they still seem to use the computer

I got sick of Win98 crashing & running slow & I realised that the box I had wasn't going to be up to running the next incarnation of Windows. I bought a 'bundle' of about 10 Linux distros from an ad in the back of a PC magazine and tried them all (Suse, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, Yellowdog, and several that I can't remember). At the time it was a toss up between Debian & Mandrake but Mandrake won. I ran Mandrake happily for several years but one of the Mandriva updates gave me grief with my laptop hanging for no reason. I spent a while trying to fix it (even asked on here IIRC) but was unable to get it working reliably, as this was around the time that Ubuntu was big news (and seemingly it still is), I decided to give it a try. I've been a Ubuntu user ever since.

I still have XP on one of my kids PCs and I dislike it.
I recently bought the other kid a laptop with VISTA and I hate it with a passion, it is appalling that Microsoft could go to market with something so bad and every time I use it I want to take an axe to the machine!

i was reading niall mansfield's practical tcp/ip. it kept banging on about how much better linux is than windows for networking stuff. so i gave it a try. i have never done a single thing that book recommended in linux, but i suppose i've done other stuff so i forgive niall.

I was running Win98SE, and was concerned that certain new things wouldn't work unless I "upgraded". Well I didn't want ME or XP, so I thought I'd try Linux. I bought LXF and tried a v8.x of Mandrake, but couldn't get out of the 800x600 screen. Got some serious issues with refresh rates too. Tried Debian 3.0-r1, complete disaster, installed, could get desktop to start, couldn't work through dpkg or whatever it was. Gave up for a while.

Later downloaded and tried Mandrake 9.0. OK until an upgrade broke URPMI. Had issues with 9.1 and 9.2, I remember a kernel upgrade breaking the nvidia driver. I tried Gentoo. After a while with Gentoo, I looked up Texstar as I had used his rpms with Mandrake. Tried PCLinuxOS, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I was doing an IT course in 1999 and Australian Personal Computer (now apcmag) released a Linux Pocket Book. A couple of us on the course decided that we wanted something different to NT4 so we installed Red Hat 5, then Red Hat 5.2 from the next edition. Installed Red Hat 7 as a dual boot system with Windows 98 and have kept with Linux ever since. In 2003 Linux became my main desktop in my home office (Red Hat 8 ) and I continued with Red Hat until Fedora Core. Along the way I tried Mandrake, Caldera Open Linux, Debian, Xandros, Knoppix and a quite a few others. After using Red Hat 9 I went to SuSE 9/9.1/9.3 then openSUSE 10. When Novell signed the Microsoft Patent Agreement I moved to Ubuntu 6.06 and have upgraded through to Ubuntu 7.10. Typing this on my Eee PC which runs a modified Xandros and planning to change to an Ubuntu derivative (can't make up my mind but I need KOrganizer).

I still look at other distros now my main system can run VirtualBox systems at speeds close to native hardware speeds.

It's been a 9 -year journey that I've enjoyed and still look forward to future developments.

'bout 2 or 3 years ago my ageing Win Me box caught a nasty virus. Attempting to re-install windows Me came to a standstill when I discovered the manufactures had supplied me with drivers for windows 98 which wouldn't work with Me.
Demoralised by years of struggling with windows, I noticed an iso of Mandriva on a windows mag disk.
In about a tenth of the time of a windows reinstall, Mandriva was up and running and I had my internet back. I was blown away!
The learning curve was steep (where has my C drive gone? And what's this hda1 thingy?) Thank goodness for LXF, no I'm not being sarky, I mean it! Most Linux mags/sites seem to assume that by newcomer to Linux, you mean that you have had 3 years at Uni, using Unix.
I'd never heard of â€œopen sourceâ€

I got a copy of Mandrake (going back a bit) on the cover of a magazine - can't even remember which one now - and decided to build a low-spec machine (I think it was a 400Mhz AMD with about 128Mb of RAM) to try it out on. Only having a 1Gb disk didn't help much so I splashed out on Red Hat 7.1 and a monster 20Gb HD!!!

Oh the memories of trying to get my nVidia card working without the installer - having to install the RPMs and configure X to run!

Being the sort that likes to fiddle (ooer) I really liked the flexibility that Linux gave me and have used it ever since - going from RH7.1 upto openSUSE 10.3 (on my server) and 10.2 on my desktop.

I finally ditched Windows on my desktop about 3 years ago (although I did have a box lying round for test purposes which I finally offloaded about a year ago) and have never looked back.

Typing this has made me realise that I've never dual booted! I've always used a standalone machine!